Third World (3 page)

He could hear the water just beginning
to bubble.

“
So, what brings you out
this way?” He was wondering if Marty had put her up to
it.

She was always into things, he knew
that much.

Surely it had to be something
important, or more likely the most trivial of attempts.

“
Oh, I was just in the
neighbourhood.” She didn’t elaborate, and he desperately tried to
take it at face value.

He mentally kicked himself for showing
up in church last Sunday. Maybe she just wanted a donation for
something, or worse, volunteers for something.

Of course! What an idiot he had been.
He’d walked right into it this time.

“
Oh, yes, the fields are
lovely this time of year.” Hank had no idea of what to say so he
turned and beckoned her to come along, and she seated herself at
the table.

She was certainly well-dressed, and he
was aware that he hadn’t smelled a woman up close and in a small
room with him in a fair while. Other than that, it was all right.
He wondered what she was looking at.

With its central core dominated by a
massive hearth that went from floor to ceiling and spanned the
entire inner wall, the room smelled vaguely of onions, tobacco
smoke and meat, mostly fried.

“
I can see why you have the
bedroom right there.”

“
Yeah, it’s warmer in
winter.”

She nodded, still looking
around.

The long front wall faced southeast so
as to heat up quickly on the winter mornings when the sun made its
belated appearance, and prevailing breezes in summer would sweep
the air out of it from the kitchen window on the southwest side,
blowing out through the setting room. Hank had a pair of windows on
the east side. His bedroom was behind the setting room, and it had
one small window up high on the east side as well. She took it all
in as he led her past the open bedroom door in a quick tour of the
place, her teacup firmly clenched in her hand. She seemed very
impressed with his small office.

The man probably lived as much on the
covered veranda out front, at least in season.

He opened the door to the rear of the
house to allow a flow of fresh air as those kitchen shutters faced
north and he rarely opened them. The pantry was there, a bit of a
mistake on his part as he always used the front door. She nodded at
his quick explanation. He had to lug everything in and through the
kitchen, which meant a lot of sweeping.

She sat down at the table again and
examined the room with care.

“
You’re doing all right,
Hank.”

He nodded modestly, a small grin
sneaking over his face as he got out the biscuits and found a clean
plate in the cupboard.

“
Yeah, I guess I’m getting
by.”

“
What are you making? A fish
net?” As he recalled, she’d been born on Earth.

His mood brightened, they could always
reminisce.

“
Ah…” Not exactly, but he
didn’t want to go into it.

She had fifteen hectares, right in town
on a kind of narrow frontage. Only two or three hectares had ever
been tilled. She was a seamstress, and she had a few goats and
chickens. She hired herself and her two sons out to work in the
fields of others. Her husband went hunting and never showed up
again. No one knew where he went or what happened to him. His name
was Alvin or Alan, Hank wasn’t quite sure which. She sold cheese
and butter, some of it on consignment and they scrounged along all
right. Other than that, she was a face in the crowd and he didn’t
know too much about her…some kind of distant cousin of Missus
Morgensen, and Polly.

“
You’re smart, Hank
Beveridge. Everyone says that.”

“
Huh?” She smiled, but of
course he knew what she was getting at.

Hank had claimed and filed on twenty
thousand hectares a decade before anyone else thought of any sort
of permanence. They said he was mad at first, and then a few more
people turned up, and once one of them innocently asked a few
questions about registration, the panicked herd stampeded towards
the registrar. It’s not that they didn’t build houses and farm the
land, but it was thought to be inexhaustible. You could always move
on if it didn’t work out. It was part of the attraction, in some
ways. What he couldn’t explain to her or anyone else, really, was
that he could never use or exploit more than a small fraction of it
alone and by himself. A lot of folks had more reasonably filed on a
few hundred hectares, and all hands contributed to the work. One or
two others in the area had bigger holdings and more grandiose plans
for it. They at least had a reason.

He could see that much. But Hank just
liked the space. Good fences make good neighbours, but there was no
need for that when the nearest house was a couple of kilometres
away. Hank’s place was the end of the line, and that way he didn’t
get much traffic.

As far as the bracken-pods went, that
was just an excuse. You could gather them anywhere that was public
property, and he had wondered a time or two why so few people did.
It took minimal business savvy to gather bracken and sell it to the
brokers when they came through once a year.

All a man needed was a scythe, and a
wagon. That and some twine, and feed for the working
critters.

Hank just liked the look of the place
and wanted to keep the neighbours a little ways down the road, so
to speak…some things were better left unsaid. It had a way of going
around.

The visit might have been more
enjoyable for Hank if only he could have figured out what brought
it on. He had no idea of why she was there and she didn’t see fit
to enlighten him. As things went, they had their tea, passed the
time, exchanged pleasantries, and after a while, they gossiped
harmlessly enough about various local personalities. She brought
Hank up to date on any number of things, which was good as he had
little to contribute in that line himself.

Yet for the life of him, Hank couldn’t
figure out what it was about. It was that unusual to get a
visitor.

She’d been alone a long time and he
accepted that, the question was why him?

And why now?

***

Commander Jeff Burke of Her
Majesty’s Ship
Hermes
stood in front of the cupola that let in a spectacular view of
space and the planet below. Third World, named for its position in
this system, a name which had stuck more to eliminate arguments
than any other reason, had a population of over half a million. The
tall, athletic Burke had held command of
Hermes
for four years. His thoughts
congealed.

Settlement had begun seventy-five or a
hundred years ago, but the original plans to export a half a
billion people to the planet had quietly been shelved when the
newcomers had been in place a few years and the complaints started
to roll in. An inquiry had been held, and ultimately it was
determined not to be anybody in particular’s fault, but pioneering
was hard work and ultimately even the best-prepared settlers fell
to subsistence level as people spread out and began to exploit the
local environments, about which they had initially known
little.

The Planetary Authority, once
established, was understandably eager to perpetuate itself as
bureaucracies will. Perhaps initial reports of the planet’s
potential had been a little too glowing. A half a million in
population was not enough to make a viable and self-sustaining
economy, and with recruitment dropping off quickly it was no longer
profitable to send any more colony ships.

The Commander had a problem,
in that things were heating up in the Vega sector and confrontation
with
Them
seemed
imminent. The Empire and
Them
had been bickering for years.

Responsible for law and order in his
sector, he had little jurisdiction on the surface, and yet he was
also charged in recent orders with apprehending and confining known
deserters from Her Majesty’s Service until such time as
courts-martial could be convened and punishments doled
out.

The trouble was, they had only a vague
idea of where a few of them were, might be, or had last been
sighted. Combing through the duty roster revealed a grand total of
sixteen or seventeen non-essential personnel available for
assignment to shore duties, none of whom he had a whole lot of
confidence in. They were available for a reason, not unusual in the
service. The only person he had to lead them was Lieutenant
Shapiro, who had virtually zero experience on his own. That, in
itself, represented an opportunity of sorts.

Burke had the funny feeling they would
be on the ground and hard to extract in a hurry if and when the
word from above came through. It was worthy of a brief
smile.

Orders were orders and this one was
unusually succinct. It also came from a long ways up the ladder,
and good officers were long in the development.

Burke had no choice but to make a stab
at it.

Chapter Three

A First Briefing

Lieutenant Newton Shapiro sat at the
head of the table and surveyed the senior members of the landing
party. His eyes swept the faces, all carefully neutral.

They were gathered for their first
briefing and planning session. The enlisted personnel at his
disposal were all the usual suspects, and were the most easily
spared from the ship’s regular routine according to Commander
Burke. In his words, it might even do the odd free spirit among
them some good to get off the ship.

It was his first meeting with the
command team.

A couple of the troops hadn’t seen
planet-side in years, as they were habitually in the brig by the
time the ship actually got anywhere.

As to why his own name came up at the
top of that list was another question, but he was a junior officer,
and while his duties as the vessel’s supply officer were not
unimportant, there were others at least partly trained in his job.
He could be spared, and he recognized that much.

“
All right. Our deserters
are last seen in the Port Complex, the usual port of call for Fleet
units. Frankly, we’ve never had occasion to land anywhere else, and
they have the best facilities. If a ship having problems set down
elsewhere, it would cause considerable problems of logistics to set
her right and lift off again. They go on shore leave. The first
place they head for is a bar. It’s the usual sad story. At some
point they realize they are absent without leave, and we figure the
usual practice is to get as far away as possible from anything that
smacks of Empire and authority.”

“
They’re fugitives.” Ensign
Spaulding nodded. “The punishment is harsh.”

A willowy blonde in her mid-twenties,
Beth was a human resources specialist, which aboard ship meant
everyone got paid. They made the contributions to their retirement
or kid’s schooling. She was a grief counselor when required and
helped in the infirmary with trauma victims, physical and
psychological. She was in charge of all records pertaining to
personnel outside of confidential medical and command security
files.

“
Right.” Shapiro went on.
“And yet they really didn’t have a plan of action. They’re not here
to emigrate and make a new life. The trouble is, they don’t have
any choice but to try, otherwise they starve, kill themselves, or
give themselves up.”

A few had ended up incarcerated under
criminal statutes. Over the years, one or two had been apprehended
that way. Sometimes people turned themselves in.

One or two over the years had done just
that. They turned themselves in to the Planetary Authority, who
placed them in custody and notified the Fleet. If they did it
quickly enough, the punishment was the usual thing, not desertion
but absent without leave. Desertion was another level of offense,
and yet how would he define it? They probably just got scared. Were
they actually intending to desert? Intent was part of the
definition of the desertion offence. Some of them were just kids,
really. As for suicide, there were no statistics.

“
Over the years, fifty-seven
men and women have deserted Fleet units of all types, on Third
World, or failed to return after shore leave. Some of them quite
recently, ah, including two of our own.”

Sober faces watched him
silently.

“
For all we know, some might
have been murdered, been killed in accidents, or even just got sick
or starved to death.”

The Fleet took full legal
responsibility for people when they signed on.

That might have been what tripped the
Commander into this mission. He wanted them back for whatever
reason, and in disciplinary matters, he would have considerable
discretion in their cases. It would be better to be caught by their
own shipmates, if possible. Of course Burke’s own performance in
this unwelcome duty would be closely scrutinized.

“
Okay. So what do we
do?”

Emerson Faber was a big,
capable-looking man with ropy forearms and bulging biceps. Shapiro
was glad to have him along, for he was at least weapons-trained and
their newest recruits would be more of a hazard, considering how
seldom they used their weapons aboard ship.